Struggling As A Skinny Guy
In our society being thin or skinny is looked as someone being “blessed” or having “great genes”. For many guys though, this could be both a blessing and a curse.
While most people have the problem of excess body fat from poor dieting choices, skinny guys have the problem of not getting enough calories in a day.
This problem has led to many people ruining their bodies with diets high in excess calories, resulting in the skinny fat epidemic (see How to Properly Gain Muscle).
So if we’re eating the excess calories we need and are still lifting weights regularly without any kind of impressive results, it probably isn’t what we’re doing, but how we’re doing it.
Why Some People Have Trouble Gaining Muscle
The first fitness program I bought online was flawed because I didn’t know enough about nutrition. Nutrition is responsible for 80% of the results you achieve in the gym.
Often when we don’t have meal plans prepared, we often choose foods based on how our mood changes throughout the day.
These are the 3 reasons why someone with higher than average metabolism would have trouble putting on any kind of significant muscle:
Not Enough Calories:
The number of calories needed to gain muscle will vary depend on how activity level during the day.The higher your activity levels, the more calories will be needed to put your body in a caloric surplus to build muscle.
With a high enough expenditure, this can result in a caloric deficit, which can cause a loss in muscle tissue if the deficit continues for too long.
With food tracking software now available on the cloud, personal trainers can connect with their clients and adjust their meals daily to calculate the best portions of food for adding muscle size.
Recent studies show how foods with higher fat content help could help individuals gain weight by increasing mitochondrial activity within cells.
The healthier option of adding calories to meals is to use a multi-chain triglyceride, like coconut oil, to your meals without relying on fast food for extra calories.
Too Much Work In The Gym:
If gaining weight has always been a problem, you should check how much time you spend in the gym. Any workout past the first hour becomes unproductive and begins to have the reverse effect on your muscle’s growth.
Guys with the physical build of ectomorphs or ecto-mesomorphs, often have difficulty building muscle because of their faster than normal metabolisms.
To maintain as much muscle as possible, ectomorphs should be exercising within 45 minutes and keep excessive cardio to a minimum.
Healthy amounts of cardio can help prevent excess calories being stored as fat but can make weight gain more difficult for naturally skinny guys.
Keeping A Negative Nitrogen Balance
Each day our body rids itself of millions of dead cells that are eventually replaced and rebuilt from new sources of amino acids we consume (protein).
The regulation of protein entering and exiting the body is known as your nitrogen balance. If you have a poor nitrogen balance you won’t ever put on any muscle and you’ll probably recover slower from your workouts.
The best way for ectomorphs to gain muscle is by consuming enough protein each day to maintain a positive nitrogen balance at all times. Having a high metabolism in this sense is a curse as it makes it more difficult to keep a positive nitrogen balance consistently enough throughout the day.
The Wrap Up
Gaining muscle will be slower for hard gainers, such as ectomorphs or mesomorphs, which is why you have put more focus on consuming larger, quality meals when eating during feeding times. This is even more important on workout days, you will need to consume more energy than your activity levels if you want to see any kind of muscle growth. Doing this over a long period of time will slowly add more size to your frame.
